My Passport Keeps Quitting Portable Hard Drives

We use a WD My Passport hard drive as an example but the information on this page applies to any beeping hard drive, not just WD.

Last week the drive when plugged into a USB port has begun to make 7 beeps, then 3 beeps followed by 3 beeps and a pause before repeating itself.

My Passport Keeps Quitting Portable Hard Drives

Although portable hard drives are built to be more rugged and withstand more knocks than the 3.5 hard drives that go into desktop machines, its important to know that all HDD hard drives are mechanical devices with moving parts.

This is the hard drive trying to pass a self test before letting the computer take control of it.

Each time the drive ticks it is actually resetting the position of its readwrite head before initiating the self test again.

In cases like this it is the actual read write heads of the hard drive that have failed.

These will need to be replaced with a working set of heads before the drive will start to function again properly.

Your hard drive may still have head damage, but there is another problem.

Beeping hard drives usually indicate one of two things: Either.

Heres an example of a beeping hard drive that arrived at the Data Clinic offices for data recovery.

In this example the beeping is relatively quiet, some hard drives are much louder than this, but the problem are the same.

Many a hard drives data has been permanently lost through the the incorrect removal of stiction.

Stiction problems should always be handled by skilled data recovery companies, do not let a well intentioned friend or a PC shop like PC World anywhere near a hard drive with stiction.

This used to be a very common problem with Toshiba laptop (2.5) hard drives several years ago and bizarrely placing the hard drive on its side and starting the drive up would often relieve the problem.

Depending on the model of hard drive there are two options, either replacing the spindle motor, or swapping the platters to another hard drive.

In the UK, Data Clinic and a couple of other companies are the only ones that have the capability of doing this.

Once again, dont let a well meaning friend, local IT expert or computer shop anywhere near a hard drive with a problem like this.

Well get straight back to you, or find your nearest Data Clinic data recovery location instead.

With many loved photos and memories stored on the hard drive it was a relief to get this work done.It was done quickly and with expertise.

Drive was damaged by overheating from failed fan.The company were very professional.

Photos restore memory images.I have no hesitation in recommending this company for any retrieval and restoration of lost data.

Georges House, 6 St Georges Way, Leicester LE1 1QZ Tel: 0800 151 2207.

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